History

Qadi Tabataba'i wrote that procession towards Karbala on the day of Arba'in has been common among Shiites since the time of the Infallible Imams (a) and Shiites practiced this tradition even at the times of Umayyads and 'Abbasids. He considered this action a permanent conduct of Shi'a during history.

The author of Adab al-Taff, published in 1388/1967, reported the gathering of Shiites in Arba'in in Karbala and likened it to gathering of Muslims in Mecca and mentioned the attendance of groups of mourners who recited poems in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. He said that it would not be exaggerating saying that more than a million people attended the pilgrimage of Arba'in at that time.

After the fall of Ba'th regime in Iraq which banned any mourning ceremony, Shiites moved towards Karbala for the first time in 2003. In the first years of procession, they were only 2-3 million people. In the next years, the number of pilgrims reached more than 10 million people.

In 2013, some reports mentioned the number of 15 million pilgrims attending Karbala.

Iraq's ministry of internal affairs gave the statistics showing that in 2013, at least 1 million and 300 thousand foreign pilgrims came from Arabic and Islamic countries as well as from among Muslim minorities in European countries to Iraq and all of them moved towards Karbala to attend the ceremonies and renew their allegiance with Imam al-Husayn (a).

References

The material for this article is mainly taken from راهپيمایی اربعین in Farsi Wikishia.